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Speed issue wth 4k still image (PSD) compositing
Hi AE-Editors,
I am compositing and CCing a 3D photorealstic 3d-Rendering (32 bpc + Alpha) of a product with a photography background in AE CS4.
3D-Rendering consists of 10 render passes(reflections, diffuse, normals, z-depth…) and 4 additional render elements (shadows, glasses) and 2 color masks.
First step was to layer all renderings in Photoshop, resulting in a 16 layered PSD, and import it into AE.
Resolution: 4096 x 3072
C-Depth: 32bit per pixel
File size: about 250-400 MB, depending on product size
Comp-length: 1 FrameHere is my prob and are my questions:
I have to wate for about 3 minutes to see any change.
How can I speed up the display?
How can I stop the preview render (the filling mouse pointer thingy)?I adjusted fast preview to adaptive res., reduced the resolution of the comp to 1/8 and switched off live-update if applicable, but to be honest, it is not possible to work.
AE CS4 9.02, 12GB RAM, Windows 7 (64-bit), i7 3 GHz, Quad-Core CPU
Any suggestions are appreciated!
Thanks,
Gerrit -
9 Replies
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wouldn’t it be easier to do a still image at those dimensions using Photoshop?
Adam Taylor
Video Editor/Audio Mixer/ Compositor/Motion GFX/Barista
Character Options Ltd
Oldham, UKhttp://www.sculptedbliss.co.uk
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Ahh, thanks, Dave! At least: that way it is possible to setup the basic comp.
Yes, more RAM would help… but how long?
Gerrit
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Could you use proxies in this situation?
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Hi Adam,
I was afraid of s.o. asking this!
Some reasons against PS
1. Photoshop has issues with the correct compositing of render passes with alpha channels. There are black seams around parts of different material or pass information. Even wth premultiplied Alpha OFF(;-))
2. I cannot use CC, like I know to do with AE, Toxik or formerly in Combustion
3. I cannot use keylight to key the color matte passes for correcting some object parts separatly. Or is there a keylight for PS
But how do people work in 4k when compositing 3d animation in AE?
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I will try this, thank you, Phil!
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all good reasons Gerrit – I only mentioned it because sometimes its the obvious answer that we forget to consider.
good luck
Adam Taylor
Video Editor/Audio Mixer/ Compositor/Motion GFX/Barista
Character Options Ltd
Oldham, UKhttp://www.sculptedbliss.co.uk
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What’s your storage like? A fast RAID will make working with 4K a lot easier.
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
The files resist on an SSD connected via SATA.
But once in memory the one file is not touched anymore is’n it? Am I wrong? -
[Gerrit Schulze] “The files resist on an SSD connected via SATA.
But once in memory the one file is not touched anymore is’n it? Am I wrong? “That is a pretty fast system, but with 4K it could still be a bottleneck. A fast SSD on SATA will top out around 250 MB/s — so a single frame would take 1-2 seconds to read.
AE will keep as much in RAM as it can, but with source footage that big, RAM goes fast. This is especially true with AE CS4 and earlier, which were 32-bit and therefore limited to 4GB of RAM per process. If your render is RAM-bound, CS5 might help, because it is 64-bit, and a single process could address all the RAM in your system.
When I work with high-res comps, I use make heavy use of proxies, the region of interest, and custom low resolutions and skipped frames in Shift-RAM previews.
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events
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